Five(2)

Except that Gideon is nothing like his “others,” the other six children of the businessman. The two youngest of whom are boys, a little older than Gideon, the result of his third marriage to a much younger woman who will be dropping them off at school about twenty-five minutes after the death in their brand-new G-Wagon. They are well adjusted and rosy-cheeked, and the young wife will tell them that she loves them when she leaves them and then drives away to start her day with Pilates, then the PTA fundraiser meeting, then walking the dog and shopping online before she picks them up from after-school football or drama or how-to-grow-up-to-be-just-like-your-asshole-rich-dad training. Emma would like to tell his wife to fuck off and die. She would like to tell all the wives like the businessman’s wife to fuck off and die.

She would like to get away from the businessman now, she would like for him not to look at her and her son and make assumptions.

“I’m working on your brother,” she says to the businessman. “But I can’t talk about it now.”

Emma then turns abruptly with Gideon and moves to a bench farther down the platform. She doesn’t care if the businessman thinks she’s a bitch. Their exchange lasts twenty-seven seconds.

Bitch, the businessman thinks for sixteen hundredths of a second as she leaves. He watches Emma and her son walk down the platform. He considers his next move. Emma is skittish and he had hoped she’d behave herself in a public place. He scared her yesterday. He shouldn’t have done that. He just wants her to smooth it over with his brother. Then put their pooled money into the start-up he’s funding today—a project with lifesaving potential on a world-changing scale—and forget all of this when they’re rolling in it. That’s all. Money fixes everything. Which is why the businessman is confused by Emma’s reaction because usually women listen to him. Usually women love him. Well, perhaps not all women.

For example, the slender, elderly white woman with the short white hair who is watching him and Emma right now would definitely not love him if she met him. The businessman, admittedly, does not do well with her demographic, as he is only interested in women who are fuckable, so he has not noticed her this morning. And this is just as well because the old woman, Mrs. Worth, does not want to be noticed. And she certainly doesn’t want to be fucked. Not this morning. She is standing in her long black coat, collar up against the wind, at the far end of the platform where the sign warns, “Passengers must not pass this point or cross the line.”

During the twenty-seven seconds of the businessman and Emma’s conversation, Mrs. Worth was lighting a surreptitious cigarette. She knows no one is watching her because it is early in the morning and no one cares about the activities of old women, and she also doesn’t give a goddamn if they do. She is nervous. It is an important day.

Mrs. Worth takes her second drag and enjoys judging Emma, who is now on a bench furiously taking things out of her bag, looking for something.

Emma’s every emotion is betrayed by her skin. Red blotches of rage and embarrassment creep up her neck as Mrs. Worth watches her shove things into her bag, empty her coat pockets, and swear when she can’t find her phone. Mrs. Worth notices the small bandage on Emma’s eyebrow. Emma once had a golden complexion, sparkling eyes, and enviable blonde tresses. But she has been so drained by Gideon’s difficult birth and subsequent difficult life that her eyes have lost their color and her hair has faded from gold to gossamer. Her skin is as pale as the butter of post office walls. Only when she feels shame or self-consciousness does her pallor change, the red patches pulsing under her translucence like neon hotel signs on postcards of Las Vegas.

Good Lord, Mrs. Worth thinks, watching her, referring to Emma but also by extension to all women born after 1975 who have careers and children but constantly complain about how difficult the “balance” is and take pride in not being able to cook as though being negligent about a child’s diet is a feminist statement while they pay other women to be their cleaners and nannies and assistants and still, with all that support, can’t manage the behavior of their children on a public outing when women like her did it all alone, all the time, with no one’s help. Useless, she thinks. She looks at Gideon, swinging his legs, shouting something incoherent, and thinks, Probably hyperactive or transgender or allergic to nuts like all of them these days.

Emma feels Mrs. Worth’s eyes on her, she looks up. There is a flicker of eye contact that lasts thirty-one hundredths of a second. Old crone, Emma thinks, familiar with the disapproving glares of mean old women.

Incompetent cow, Mrs. Worth thinks and sniffs with satisfaction, now that she knows that Emma knows she disapproves of her. If more people disapproved of things—social media, self-checkout machines at the supermarket, vegetarians, fat children, those disgraceful leggings that all the women round here wear—the world would be a better place for Mrs. Worth. She is perceptive, though. Gideon is indeed allergic to nuts.

Mrs. Worth turns her attention away from Emma and watches a small bird alight on the platform. She looks for the train down the track as she puffs on her cigarette. She checks her watch, not long now until the train gets here and takes her to London to see her grandsons. The last time she saw them the little one was four and the big one was six. The little one is nine now and the big one is eleven, and she reckons they have only a vague memory of her if they have one at all. And God knows what her daughter-in-law put into their heads about her over all these years. But they are her son’s sons, and the invitation to her daughter-in-law’s funeral feels like a step in the right direction. For all of them. Especially her daughter-in-law.